This was only the second election to the parliament, created four years ago by London in a process called “devolution” as a concession to the rising nationalist sentiment in Scotland. These strains within the United Kingdom have sharpened alongside Britain’s decline as a world power.

The Scottish parliament has replaced the former Scottish office of the British parliament. London retains control over major economic decisions and matters of defense and foreign policy.

In spite of the attempts by British prime minister Anthony Blair to win votes by trumpeting Washington and London’s military victory in Iraq, his Labour Party suffered some losses, and remains unable to govern outside of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Labour secured 50 of the 129 seats up for grabs—six fewer than the last election—winning the majority of votes in working-class areas. The party retains the affiliation and financial backing of many unions.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), Labour’s main parliamentary opposition, won 27 seats, a decline of eight.

The Conservative and Unionist Party kept the same number of seats. Up until the late 1950s the party, which stands for the maintenance of the “union” with England, used to win more than 50 percent of the vote. Its leaders have traditionally depended for electoral support on a layer of Protestant workers who, until recently, have monopolized better-paid jobs, to the exclusion of workers of Irish Catholic origin.

The Greens and the reformist Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) both scored gains, collecting 13 seats between them, in contrast to the two they won last time. SSP representatives advocated limited tax concessions to working people, increased wages for public sector workers, and free school meals.

A number of “independents” also won parliamentary seats. One was a doctor who campaigned on a platform of opposition to the closure of a Glasgow hospital.

Just over 50 percent of the electorate, or 1.9 million people, turned out to vote, a drop of 9 percent over last time.

“No Baghdad bounce, no overwhelming victory for any of the main parties,” wrote Peter Riddell in the May 3 Times of London.

Campaigning on the war victory, Blair had traveled to Scotland several times during the run-up to the vote. His would-be triumphal visits tended to be overshadowed by other news, however. His April 15 trip, for example, coincided with a well-publicized negative report from the Royal Bank of Scotland. The document revealed that manufacturing output had declined for the third month in a row, indicating that Scotland’s economy was heading for its second recession since 2001.

On the weekend before, several hundred workers had joined a protest march organized by the Union of Shop Distribution and Allied Workers against job losses resulting from the closure of the Boots pharmaceutical plant in Airdrie near Glasgow. The area has seen a wave of factory closures in recent years.  
 
Blair targets Scottish nationalists
Blair also targeted the Scottish nationalists. The main choice, he said, was between Labour and its program of “reforming our public services or the SNP [which] will file for divorce from the rest of Britain.”

The SNP’s manifesto promises to hold a referendum on independence some three years into office. Party leader John Swinney pledged to use the Scottish parliament’s ability to adjust taxes to secure a reduction in business taxes. A number of prominent capitalists spoke out in support of the SNP. At the same time there were signs that the party has lost some support among farmers and other small producers.

Unsatisfied with the response by the big-business parties to sharpening attacks on their livelihoods, fisherman in the Northeast fielded a candidate in the elections from the Fishing Party to protest the impending cut by 75 percent of the white fish fleet in Scotland. In December and January a group of fishermen called the “Cod Crusaders” had organized vigils and seaborne protests against these cuts.

Such protests, which tend to target London and call for support from the Scottish parliament, give the lie to claims in the big-business media that support for Scottish nationalism has declined. A survey published on the eve of the election indicated that 77 percent of people in Scotland saw themselves as Scottish, while 16 per cent identified as British. The ratio in a 1979 poll was 56 percent to 38 percent.  
 
 
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